by Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

by Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

Advocates of historically black public colleges are closely watching a Maryland lawsuit that promises to bring more resources to the four state campuses that enrolled black students during the Jim Crow era.

Historically black colleges, a designation for more than 100 public and private schools established before 1964 to serve the black community in 20 states and the District of Columbia, represent about 3% of all U.S. colleges and universities and accounted for nearly 18% of bachelor's degrees awarded to black students in 2011, according to the Center for Minority-Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

The schools are considered major pipelines for black students who aspire to graduate and professional degrees. But alumni and other supporters say many of the schools are treated as lesser institutions than their traditionally white counterparts.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake found in October that a coalition of alumni and students in Maryland proved that the state's higher education commission was essentially operating a two-track system of higher education despite federal laws banning racial segregation.

Coalition leaders and state officials are now preparing for mediation, with a status report due to Blake in January. Either side could appeal a final judgment, but "we are very happy with the current ruling," says Michael Jones, lead attorney for the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education.

The case already has added momentum to alumni of Cheyney University in Cheyney, Pa., the oldest historically black public college in the United States. It was founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth.

"The Maryland case pretty much laid out many of the concerns that black colleges and universities have and every one of those issues that was raised had merit," says Philadelphia lawyer Michael Coard, who is leading an effort to revitalize Cheyney, his alma mater, which he says has fallen into disrepair because of a discriminatory state funding formula.

How the Maryland case plays out could have "tremendous impact" on 10 states that were found in 1972 to be operating racially segregated higher education systems, says Lezli Baskerville, president of the non-profit National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. Of those states, six - Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas - are still being monitored by the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. When the federal Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, 19 states were operating racially segregated higher education systems.

One catalyst for the Maryland lawsuit, filed in 2006, was the state's approval in 2005 of a joint MBA program by Towson University and the University of Baltimore, both traditionally white institutions, even though Morgan State University, a historically black college located just miles from either campus, had been offering an MBA degree for more than 30 years. Morgan State's enrollments of white students dropped significantly, the coalition argued.

Similar concerns have been raised in other states. In 2010, a group of Georgia alumni filed a federal complaint arguing that some majority-white institutions were duplicating "the few niche programs that exist" at state HBCUs, such as an engineering technology program at Savannah State University. The complaint was withdrawn because the alumni group lacked a strong base of support, says John Clark, a lawyer who filed the complaint.

Foes of a state proposal this year to allow Oklahoma State University to establish an accounting program on its Tulsa campus say the plan, if passed, would undermine a similar program offered in Tulsa by Langston University, the state's only historically black public institution.

The judge in the Maryland case suggested that a "promising start" in Maryland would be for historically black colleges to create "programmatic niches" in two or more high-demand fields such as computer science and health care facilities management.

In court documents, the Maryland Higher Education Commission acknowledged a "shameful history" but said the state had met its legal obligation to desegregate colleges.

Now, Maryland Secretary of Higher Education Danette Howard says the state will make a "good-faith effort" to work out a remedy.

"If we handle this issue in the way that I know the state intends to, and that plaintiffs have suggested they intend to, it could be considered a model for other states," she says.

Earl Richardson, who served as Morgan State's president for 26 years before stepping down in 2010, says he hopes for exactly that: "I get all excited when I think about what could have been, and what can be."